A. E.

A Memoir of A. E. By John Eglinton. (Macmillan 7s. 6d) - The Living Torch. By A. E. Edited by Monk Gibbon. (Mac- millan. its. 6d.)

Mn. JOHN EGLINTON, the Irish essayist and literary com- panion of George Moore, has written the life of A. E., told

so far as possible in A. E.'s letters and in his own recollections and those of common friends. As a story it is all too short, and though it is an " authorised " life, the title given it of a memoir pretty well indicates the scope of Mr. Eglinton's biography. Certainly those like myself, to whom the famous " Irish poet, economist and myltic " was a problem (an attractive problem), will be satisfied that his biographer should be a man of thought like Mr. Eglinton rather than a historian or anecdotist, however brilliant ; and I daresay that A. E. himself would have shrunk from becoming the subject of an elaborate work of research.

Still the biographies of many persons less influential than A. E., less many-sided, have been full-dress events, and I confess that I feel the lack of an index in a book which contains

various interesting references to such important figures of our times as W. B. Yeats, Moore, Plunkett, Shaw, F. S. Oliver— to mention but a few of those who sought A. E.'s peculiar wisdom or were entranced by his benevolent personality.

The memoir, beautifully composed and written, is a tribute, but a tribute which comes from both the mind and the heart, a. sagacious as well as an affectionate book. It is in a philo- sophical spirit and with a dry humour that Mr. Eglinton indicates the various differences between his point of view and that of the great and endearing man whom he knew for so long.

They did not see eye to eye about Ireland and about the War, and were even estranged for a time by a political dispute. A. E., being himself a " lapsed " Northerner, used to look oh Eglinton's Unionist reserves as an expression of one of the hereditary Irish perversities, amazing in a man of superior intelligence. But there are many passages in this memoir Which show a rare insight on the part of Mr. Eglinton into Irish things and people, notably his picture of Horace Plunkett and the group of economic workers surrounding him into which A. E. was initiated just about the time he had begun to persuade himself of the " specially sacred nature of the soil of Ireland," a conception which afterwards entered into

all his political and social theories. Towards 1920, almost all the Dublin Intellectuals except Eglinton were backing Sinn

Fein with their mouths, and the transcendental tone of A. E.'s statements of the Irish case, by their very remoteness from Realpolitik, played a part in bringing about Mr. Lloyd George's " surrender " to Collins. Every important English visitor went to A. E. as to the national sage.

" Probably (says Eglinton) there are men nearly everywhere talkers and philosophers, who loom larget in their little circle than the great ones of the world outside. But there was nothing merely, local or provincial in A. E., and what strangers commonly said of him was that they had never met anyone like him. His mind rose as free from its surroundings as Coleridge's. . . ."

It is said that Collins, after listening to a discourse upon the " national Being," enquired : " And your point, Mr.

Russell ? " ; but A. E., like Swedenborg and Yeats in their Senates, could meet and often overcome in-argument men of the world on their own ground, though he had a distressing habit, when worsted, of reverting to the aloofness of the

cosmic philosopher. His mistake as an Irish prophet was in failing to recognise, as Mr. Eglinton puts it, that " the essential Ireland was Catholic Ireland, from which he was excluded." How far he was a disappointed man at the end it is difficult to say ; but after having been the most stay-at-home creature in the world, he spent the last years largely in London and America. " He seems," says Mr. Eglinton, " to have been as pleasingly diverted in America as Erasmus was in England by the enthusiastic kisses of female adorers." My impression was that he had lost a great deal Of his old gusto and self- confidence ; his halcyon times were those of his Irish influence.

Mr. Eglinton recalls him in his early Theosophical days when he was a solitary who had begiin to paint his visions ; and he remarks that if renunciation was what A. E. was really inclined to, his true path would have lain through " the lonely and often inglorious toil of the practice of art." He believed that he was essentially a painter, and judges so good as Hugh Lane and Doctor Bodkin were ready to assent, even when maddened by his contentment to rest in a technical incom- petence. On the other hand, as a writer his workmanship was always effective, and he never seems to have encountered the slightest difficulty in communicating both in verse and Prose his heroic opinions and that sense of the magic of earth upon which his religiosity was founded.

Another admirable tribute is Mr. Monk Gibbon's collection of A. E.'s contributions to the Irish Statesman. The Living Torch recalls for us the sage in his amazing versatility; ready at every moment to philosophise upon any subject upon heaven and earth and in the void. A long biographical Introduction to the collection is written with deep feeling and reveals a close acquaintance with A. E.'s work and thought. Mr. Monk Gibbon 'discusses at some length and most interestingly the nature of the poet's visions and his religious attitude. With A. E. religion seems to have been an experimental science, based on his success in certain prac- tices of concentration, &c., and on things seen. The Candle of Vision records surprising communications with personages supposed to have come out of the memory of earth, and for these supernormal experiences it seems that A. E. looked to scientific and pseudo-sources for confirmation. This is not how the faithful among men (whether members of the organised Churches or not) usually find their way through the world ; and on re-reading A. E.'s articles on philosophical and religious subjects, now in Mr. Monk Gibbon's edition, I find myself doubting whether he was a man of the deeper certainties. But of what Mr. Eglinton says of his prodigious cleverness, and of what both he and Mr. Gibbon say of his fullness of heart for all, and chiefly for the weaker, his material disinterestedness and the affection he inspired, there can be no dispute.

J. M. HoNE.